Friday, June 16, 2017

It took us a few posts to find a few comics with the poem "Ozymandias," but today we double down with Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice." First up, from 2005, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #191, "Cold Snap, part 2" Written by J.Torres, pencils by David Lopez, inks by Fernando Blanco.
During Mr. Freeze's latest crime spree, when one of his hired goons suggests stealing a painting to sell later, and Freeze says "there will be no later," that should be a warning sign for that guy. Batman catches it, when he sees the video footage, and suspects Freeze of being suicidal; although he doesn't see Freeze as the type to do it simply. Unwilling to go on without his beloved Nora (and I'm not sure what had happened to her at this point) Freeze is gathering up some of her favorite things, and a few frozen corpses, then he's going to crank up his diamond-powered freeze machine to 11 and freeze the whole city. Batman points out that might not even kill him, but when the machine is about to blow, Freeze refuses to let himself be saved, and seemingly dies in the ensuing explosion. Batman figures like winter, Mr. Freeze would return. (In somewhat poor scheduling, Mr. Freeze would return the very next issue, albeit in a story set earlier in his career.) Alfred asks if he thought Freeze could ever get past his grief; with a painting of his parents behind him, Batman admits he might not be qualified to answer that one.
Mr. Freeze is less suicidal, somewhat more murdery in the next one: 2017's All-Star Batman #6, "Ends of the Earth, part one" Written by Scott Snyder, art by Jock. Attacking a research faculty in Alaska, with his zombie-like cryogenic revivals, Freeze intends to release a bacteria from an ice core that would kill about everything on earth. Batman tries to stop him, and points out Nora probably wouldn't be keen on waking up in the icy graveyard of the world. Freeze has Batman beat, but Batman had planned on that, and had infected himself with a hot-running virus to destroy the bacteria--even as the faculty is bombed!
This virus storyline would go on, but some of this issue isn't clear: Bats drags Freeze into a cryogenic chamber, to wait out the bombing? And the virus was heat resistant to destroy the bacteria, but wouldn't firebombing take care of that? And as is often the case, Batman seems to go out of his way to save the villain, but his henchmen? Screw 'em. Still, this time Mr. Freeze seems to have come around to the ice portion of Frost's poem; which kind of seemed like a given, but there you go.